DOCTORS, patients and politicians have voiced their disquiet at plans to downgrade Birmingham's busy City Hospital.
Yet the health trust's number-crunchers have been keen to push through proposals to reduce the number of emergency operations at City Hospital, sending the vast majority of patients to Sandwell instead.
Today, though, people power appears to have scored a significant success in the battle to stop the blueprint being implemented.
Health Secretary Alan Johnson has called in the plans so they can be thoroughly scrutinised.
It would be wrong to portray this as a victory for the protesters. It is too early for that.
But it does provide an opportunity for Mr Johnson and his team to ask themselves a simple but crucial question.
Would patients benefit or potentially suffer because of the downgrading of A&E provision at City Hospital?
Here is an opportunity for the new Health Secretary to prove that this really is a listening government.